HIS architecture stands for the abstract system, which, akin to a building structure, is meant to represent the various computational components of the healthcare system, their interactions with one another, as well as the processes and connectors that makeup, said system (Mistades, 2017). Architectures vary in size and scope, ranging from highly-customized architectures of local hospitals and healthcare centers, utilized to tackle the specific requirements of their day-to-day work, to a large city, state, and federal-level systems meant to ensure coordination and cooperation between various smaller information systems. A healthcare administrator needs to understand HIT/HIS architecture for several reasons. The most important one is navigation – it is something they would need to do daily, to fish the required information from the system. In addition, they would be required to understand the principles of HIS architecture in order to modulate and modify it to suit their organization’s needs (Mistades, 2017). Finally, the knowledge of architecture would enable them to fix problems and choose the appropriate enterprise hospital information systems (EHIS).
EHIS is used to capture and store comprehensive patient information utilizing the integration of delivery and organizational health continuum. Their advantages come from the fact that they can store all kinds of patient info, including audio recordings, animation, imagery, and printed documents (AHRQ, 2014). Another advantage is the variety of formats in which they are stored – by that cloud, data warehouse, or centralized storage. The system even allows for physical record storage that can then be logically linked with virtual recordings and systems, making physical files much easier to find and recover.
The weaknesses of EHIS largely come from their strengths – as the system is more focused on patients, rather than departments or disciplines, it is harder to integrate into the larger frameworks, and thus are suited to healthcare centers operating under one common organizational structure, and having several internally-integrated settings, such as ambulatory care, acute care, and long-term care (AHRQ, 2014). Finally, these systems, being patient-oriented, are usually customized to fit the specific patients rather than larger systems, making them, at times, redundant.
The traditional approach to analyzing HIS architecture comes from various performance metrics and comparisons to the already existing systems (U.S. Department, 2017). Their architecture is built on generalized assumptions about what a healthcare system has to have without taking into account the individual peculiarities of each enterprise. The second approach is based on information needs (AHRQ, 2014). It first asserts which types of information and on what basis is required for every operation made within a singular hospital system, and ensures that data to be available at the beck and call of every professional, whenever it is needed.
Another approach comes from the security perspective, where applicability and flexibility can be sacrificed to increase the security of the system from various outside interferences (AHRQ, 2014). Access to important data may be limited by passwords, firewalls, and limited time of use, which would make the system less manageable, but more secure. The priority of analysis is determined by the requirements for the system by the individual proprietors, as well as regulatory and government bodies. Typically, the traditional approach comes from federal or state instructions, which are generalized by design, with information needs and security being determined by the local hospital administration, with the reliance on the existing guidelines.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (2014). A robust health data infrastructure. Web.
Mistades, E. (2017). Enterprise architecture for healthcare. Web.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2017). Health information technology. Web.